The Radicalization Risks Of GPT-3 And Advanced Neural Language Models

In 2020, OpenAI developed GPT-3, a neural language model that is capable of sophisticated natural language generation and completion of tasks like classification, question-answering, and summarization. While OpenAI has not opensourced the model’s code or pre-trained weights at the time of writing, it has built an API to experiment with the model’s capacity. The Center

NATO Science for Peace and Security-funded Advanced Research Workshop on ‘Terrorist Use of the Internet: Assessment and Response’

A NATO Science for Peace and Security-funded Advanced Research Workshop on ‘Terrorist Use of the Internet: Assessment and Response’, jointly organised by VOX-Pol and the University of Swansea’s Cyberterrorism Project, was hosted at Dublin City University from 27 – 29 June, 2016. The invitation-only workshop provided an opportunity for the 60 participants which included academics,

VOX-Pol Newsletter 11(11) November 2024

Welcome to Volume 11, Issue 11 of the monthly VOX-Pol Newsletter. UPCOMING EVENT VOX-Pol partner project Tech Against Terrorism Europe (TATE) invites you to their final online webinar: Innovations & Insights. This two-hour webinar highlights the insights, lessons, and outputs developed during the TATE project. It will take place on Monday 9 December 2024 at 09:00 GMT | 10:00 CET. 

The VOX-Pol Blog turns ten years old

The VOX-Pol Blog has been running for ten years this month and currently contains nearly 500 posts. On it you’ll find book reviews, research article summaries, reflection pieces, cross-posts, and translations.  The Blog publishes short (under 1000 words) articles every week at midday on Wednesdays for our audience of researchers, policymakers, law enforcement, social media company

Threats to Democracies: A view from Australia

By Michele Grossman Like many other Western liberal democracies, Australia is currently experiencing a range of challenges to both the stability and sanctity of democratic structures and institutions and the beliefs and values that underwrite them. Threats to democracies are nothing new – they have existed for as long as democracies themselves. However, faced with

Some online conspiracy-spreaders don’t even believe the lies they’re spewing

H. Colleen Sinclair, Louisiana State University There has been a lot of research on the types of people who believe conspiracy theories, and their reasons for doing so. But there’s a wrinkle: My colleagues and I have found that there are a number of people sharing conspiracies online who don’t believe their own content. They

Three steps to talking to a loved one at risk of being radicalised into rioting

Anthony English, The Open University For some, the shocking scenes of violence which have erupted across dozens of locations in England and Northern Ireland will evoke an all-too-real concern – could someone close to me get involved in the violence? Alongside those directly affected by the act of rioting itself, there are another set of

Middle-aged radicalisation: why are so many of Britain’s rioters in their 40s and 50s?

Sara H Wilford, De Montfort University Look closely at the pictures of the violent unrest that has spread across England and Northern Ireland and you will notice something that is not being spoken about. The rioters seen fighting, attacking police and setting fire to buildings are often middle aged – people in their 40s, 50s

Propaganda in focus: decoding the media strategy of ISIS

This investigation employs the analytical framework established by Braddock and Horgan to conduct a comprehensive content analysis of 79 official English-language propaganda videos disseminated by ISIS, with the objective of quantifying the thematic composition and the evolutionary trajectory of ISIS’s international media operations and propaganda machinery from 2014 to 2017. The findings reveal that a